Late Ming Dynasty: Summoning players from Liaodong to support the Ming Dynasty

The highly provocative subtitle on GG—"Are you still playing fake games? Come experience real war and defend your country with your own hands!"—is quite something.

To defend our homeland?

These two words carried a peculiar magic, striking a certain switch deep within Wang Han's heart.

For some inexplicable reason, he abandoned the report and instead clicked on the video link that had been ridiculed by countless people.

"I'd like to see what kind of nonsense you, this browser game guy, have to spout."

The video begins.

Under the moonlight, a spear flashed like a dragon. A valiant man in ancient attire, with a dignified figure and a melancholy air, was practicing his spear technique. His movements were sharp and each move exuded the iron-blooded killing intent honed on the battlefield.

"Hmm, the motion capture is good, but the lighting is a bit fake." Wang Han commented with the eye of a veteran gamer, casually typing a line in the already exploding barrage of comments: "The art team should be punished. They can't even do the moon's reflection properly; it looks like a light bulb."

The comments section was a chaotic mess:

"Holy crap, this actor is amazing! Where did they find the martial arts choreographer?"

"This build quality...did they squeeze every last drop out of the UE5 engine?"

"Wake up, you upstairs! You're obviously a paid extra in Hengdian World Studios, look how hard you're working!"

The scene shifts to dilapidated city walls, numb crowds, and the empty, fearful faces of children. The music becomes mournful and desolate.

"Oh, starting to play the victim now? Classic tactic, creating an apocalyptic atmosphere to elicit sympathy." Wang Han curled his lip and took another swig of cola, but felt inexplicably choked up inside.

What followed was a bloody battlefield.

Blades pierced flesh, blood spurted, and severed limbs flew through the air. A burly man leaped from the city wall, carrying an enemy, letting out a beast-like roar. The camera shook violently, with drops of blood even splattering onto the "lens" and slowly sliding down. The overwhelming chaos and carnage made Wang Han stop what he was doing.

It's a bit... too real.

Especially the convulsions of those soldiers who fell after being shot by arrows—that wasn't a stiff, programmed animation, but the most realistic physiological reaction when life was taken away.

Just as he began to have doubts, the video came to an end.

There are no visuals, only a rough, raw recording with the sound of wind and static, in which an extremely arrogant voice is screaming in broken Chinese.

"Listen up, you southern dogs in the city! Surrender and we'll spare your lives! If you dare resist, when the city falls, not a single chicken or dog will be spared!"

"Bang!"

Wang Han slammed his hand on the table, knocking the Coke can over to the ground, where the brown liquid soaked the floor covered with snack wrappers.

An inexplicable anger surged up his head.

You bastard!

He stared intently at the blacked-out screen, his heart pounding with rage. In that instant, the game, the advertisements—everything vanished from his mind. That blatant insult ignited something deep within him.

He replayed the video over and over again, and the comments section had long since turned from teasing to a fierce battle of polarized opinions.

"I work in post-production! I can say with certainty that if this is special effects, then the game's cost is so high that Musk would go bankrupt!"

"Stop bragging, upstairs! My frame rate police are here! The distribution of sparks from the sword cutting through the armor doesn't conform to Newton's laws. It's fake! (doge)"

"Putting everything else aside, that last line, 'Southern dog,' the production team is truly fearless. They're treating nationalistic sentiment like fuel, waiting to be washed away!"

The debate escalated wildly across various forums and communities, with 99% of people mocking it as a scam and a poorly made viral marketing campaign. However, a small group of hardcore gamers, through frame-by-frame analysis, discovered more and more chilling details.

Wang Han, nicknamed "I, the King of Liver," is the president of a top gaming guild in China, and his intuition is far more acute than that of ordinary players.

He shut down the noisy forum, his eyes gleaming with excitement and calculation. He knew a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity had arrived. Whether the game was real or fake, it already possessed all the elements to become a phenomenon!

He started a live stream directly in his own live stream room with millions of followers.

In the video, he sports messy hair, wears black-rimmed glasses, and has half a spicy snack in his mouth, looking completely different from the heroic image of the silver-armored young general in the game.

"Brothers, I'm sure you've all seen that '100% real' guy." He got straight to the point, projecting the video onto the screen. "Most people think it's fake, a scam. To be honest, I also think the promotional copy is so stupid it looks like it was written by an intern."

He then changed the subject: "But I watched it seventeen times. Let's look at a few details."

He froze the image on the moment a soldier was pierced through his shield by an arrow and pinned to the wall. "Look at his face, from shock to pain, to the relief of life slipping away, the whole process takes only 0.7 seconds. This isn't acting, this is something you only see in documentaries."

He then switched to a scene of hand-to-hand combat on the city wall. "And here, the sparks flying as this Jin soldier's sword strikes the Ming army's armor, the degree of dent in the armor, and the subtle trembling of the wielder's wrist due to the reaction force... it all feels too real."

The live stream chat changed from "Haha, Chairman Wang is up to his old tricks again" to a screen full of question marks and "Holy crap!"

"So, I have a bold guess." Wang Han spat out the spicy snack in his mouth, his expression more serious than ever before. "Either this is a company we've never heard of, a company that has mastered some kind of godlike technology, and they've botched their advertising."

"Or it's a complete scam; they created a convincingly realistic video using methods we can't understand."

He grinned, revealing a set of white teeth, and smiled like a crazy gambler about to go all in.

"But I'm betting on the former!"

"Brothers! Don't you want to know what's going on here? Don't you want to see what this so-called 'Real War' is all about? Even if it's a trap, our 'Glory' guild will be the first to jump in and dig it upside down!"

He shouted in a highly inflammatory tone: "Today, we're not here for anything else! Just for that last phrase, 'Southern dogs'! Those who are afraid to die, don't come! Those who are afraid to be fooled, don't come! If you want to witness history, if you want to personally take down those bastards in the video, then charge with me!"

One stone stirs up a thousand waves!

Wang Han's live stream room was in an uproar. Countless people, persuaded by him, flocked to the rudimentary official website with only a video and an application button, hoping to "expose the scam" or "what if it works out."

Meanwhile, inside the residence of the garrison commander of Guangning City.

Looking at the number of "internal beta test applicants" skyrocketing like a rocket on the "Map of Mountains and Rivers" interface, Chu Ze finally revealed a cold smile.

He quickly set the screening criteria: prioritizing "hardcore gamers" who are online for more than ten hours a day, "professional players" with experience in hardcore war games, and "special talents" who filled in special skills such as "engineering", "history", and "fighting" in their notes.

He scanned through resumes at lightning speed, his gaze lingering briefly on a few interesting IDs.

[ID: I'm the King of the Grinders. Note: Guild leader for ten years, proficient in organization and management, rich experience in PvP command, currently studying history.]

"We've recruited a leader-type talent and core member."

[ID: Cement Fairy. Note: Master of Civil Engineering, First-Class Registered Construction Engineer. PS: The city wall in the promotional video has structural problems. Contact me, I can reinforce it to withstand an Italian cannon.]

"Infrastructure powerhouse? Perfect! Must acquire!"

[ID: Overlord of the Spear and the Meat. Note: Strong enough to lift a cauldron, eats three pounds of meat in one meal, just go for it!]

"We also need the reckless chargeers, the cannon fodder... no, the reserve force of the elite troops."

With a flick of his mind, Chu Ze added thirty carefully selected names, including Wang Han, to the first batch of "Chosen Ones." Watching his [Spiritual Essence] plummet from 30 to 0, a resolute glint flashed in his eyes. This was his starting capital, a gamble he was willing to risk everything for; it was his only hope for breaking the deadlock.

He clicked "Confirm Arrival".

Blue Star, inside a rented room.

After Wang Han submitted his impressive application form, a mysterious countdown popped up on the screen.

【10...9...8...】

"Ha, what a charade." He leaned back in his chair with disdain, already bracing himself for a rough download interface.

【3...2...1...】

The instant the countdown reached zero, Wang Han felt an irresistible force coming from the void, suddenly seizing his consciousness!

The computer screen in front of him didn't turn black; instead, it instantly pixelated, breaking down into billions of endless streams of golden data that devoured him! All the sounds and light in the world were sucked away, leaving only a dizzying sensation as if his soul was being forcibly ripped from his body and traveling at high speed through a time tunnel.

The next second, a cold, emotionless synthesized voice seemed to transcend time and space, resounding directly in the depths of his soul.

【Chosen One 001, welcome to…】

Before he could finish speaking, a biting wind, carrying the strong smell of rust and blood, suddenly rushed into his nostrils! Under his feet was a hard, sticky texture, and in his ears came the suppressed cries and the clanging of weapons clashing in the distance.

[...The Iron-Blooded Empire]